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C. S. LewisA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The novel opens with an unnamed narrator explaining that she is an old woman, a queen with no immediate family, whose crown will pass to her nephew. She no longer fears the gods. In fact, she intends, in this book, to make a complaint against them and to leave it to her reader to pass judgment.
She then tells us that her name is Orual and she is the eldest daughter of Trom, King of Glome. The people of Glome worship a goddess called Ungit—whom the Greeks call Aphrodite—who takes the form of a black stone. It is primarily against Ungit’s son, the god of the Grey Mountain, that Orual’s charge is laid.
She begins her story with the day her mother died, when she and her sister Redival were taken into the garden and had their heads shaved in a traditional ritual of mourning. While their nurse, Batta, scares them with tales of evil stepmothers, the girls first acquire a tutor, a Greek slave known as the Fox because of his red hair. The King tells the Fox to practice teaching his daughters until he has a son and to try to make Orual wise, as “it’s about all she’ll ever be good for” (2).
By C. S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet
C. S. Lewis
Perelandra
C. S. Lewis
Prince Caspian
C. S. Lewis
Surprised by Joy
C. S. Lewis
That Hideous Strength
C. S. Lewis
The Abolition of Man
C. S. Lewis
The Discarded Image
C. S. Lewis
The Four Loves
C. S. Lewis
The Great Divorce
C. S. Lewis
The Horse And His Boy
C. S. Lewis
The Last Battle
C. S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C. S. Lewis
The Magician's Nephew
C. S. Lewis
The Pilgrim's Regress
C. S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain
C. S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters
C. S. Lewis
The Silver Chair
C. S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
C. S. Lewis